1 FIRST, O songs, for a prelud… Lightly strike on the stretch’d ty… in my city, How she led the rest to arms—how s… How at once with lithe limbs, unwa…

1 HUSH’D be the camps to-day; And, soldiers, let us drape our wa… And each, with musing soul retire,… Our dear commander’s death. 2 No more for him life’s stormy c…

O sun of real peace! O Hastening… O free and extatic! O what I here… O the sun of the world will ascend… O so amazing and broad—up there re… O vision prophetic, stagger’d with…

Of him I love day and night I dre… And I dream’d I went where they h… in that place, And I dream’d I wander’d searchin… And I found that every place was…

Recorders ages hence! Come, I will take you down undern… tell you what to say of me; Publish my name and hang up my pic… lover,

Thou reader throbbest life and pri… Therefore for thee the following c…

WHY reclining, interrogating? Wh… What deepening twilight! scum floa… Who are they, as bats and night-do… What a filthy Presidentiad! (O so… arctic freezings!)

Over the Western sea hither from… Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-s… Leaning back in their open barouch… Ride to-day through Manhattan. Libertad! I do not know whether o…

DID YOU ask dulcet rhymes from… Did you find what I sang erewhile… to understand? Why I was not singing erewhile fo… understand—nor am I now;

These I singing in spring collect… (For who but I should understand… And who but I should be the poet… Collecting I traverse the garden… Now along the pond-side, now wadin…

O span of youth! ever-push’d elast… O manhood, balanced, florid and fu… My lovers suffocate me, Crowding my lips, thick in the por… Jostling me through streets and pu…

Here the frailest leaves of me, an… Here I shade and hide my thoughts… And yet they expose me more than a…

That shadow my likeness that goes… chattering, chaffering, How often I find myself standing… How often I question and doubt wh… But among my lovers and caroling t…